“Together with a permanent trespass notice barring all three of you from this property, from my office, and from the headquarters of the Maya and Rowan Larkin Foundation.” My father did not take it.

He stood with his hands at his sides, and the paper hung in the cold air between us, and then it slipped from my fingers and fluttered down and came to rest across the toe of his polished leather shoe.

He looked down at it as though it were something diseased.

“If any of you sets foot on this lawn again,” I went on, in the same quiet, even voice, “if you text me, if you call me, or if you make any attempt to contest the foundation’s legal standing — then my counsel has instructions to release the recorded phone call from the hospital chapel to every news outlet currently covering this settlement.” I watched my father’s face change.

I watched the blood go out of it.